Space.

Take up space. It’s a comment I frequently find myself giving to my ballet students. Keep strength in your arms, stretch your legs, make eye contact with yourself in the mirror, and for God’s sake…take up space.

I was taught to take up space in the ballet studio. From a young age, my mom instilled in me the importance of moving to the front of the room, volunteering to demonstrate combinations, and always dancing to my fullest extent. My teachers encouraged me to extend energy throughout my extremities, letting that energy radiate from the tips of my fingers through the ends of my toes. Dancing, I came to realize, is the simultaneously simple yet courageously complex art of taking up space.

I don’t remember exactly when I stopped feeling worthy of the space I was taking. I was perfectly happy to be alive, but I just did not feel like I was a person who was supposed to live life out loud. The shift to this mindset was gradual, but started sometime in college. Likely when my body and my hormones were whacked out from navigating the new world of birth control pills…when my metabolism was exacting its revenge after years of crash dieting…when I started losing control of elements of my life I’d always thought of as safe havens. Being the stubborn person I am, it never occurred to me I was not the first person to feel this way. I never reached out for help, and the farther my body strayed from the familiar frame I’d maintained during my teenage years, the less I felt I deserved to inhabit the space around me.

The loss of ownership over my own space hurt. It hurt my dancing. It hurt my relationships. It hurt my decision-making. And it hurt the way I spoke to myself. Because, like a gas or liquid, negativity expands to fill the space available, and man was I providing it a lot of availability.

Funny enough, I think the day I decided to quit ballet was the day I began to reclaim my surroundings. While the actual decision to quit was shockingly quick, re-staking my territory was very much not. Working seemingly dead-end jobs with no set home and no clear goals was unfamiliar and uncomfortable—two words I never seek to experience in life, but two words necessary for any personal growth.

Directly after quitting ballet, I swore I’d never take a dance class again. I needed a complete break. I needed to sort out my life without allowing dance to take up so much mental, physical, and emotional space. I was also certain that returning to a dance class after so much time away would feel horrible—like I was trapped in a body that used to be able to achieve great things and now could only hobble through the steps without any technique worth watching.

So it took me by complete surprise when, almost three years later, I sat restlessly at my desk at work, tapping my feet to the Ed Sheeran album playing through my headphones, I found myself googling contemporary dance classes in Salt Lake. I think it was a combination of circumstances in my own life as well as the emotion brought up by Ed’s pleading melodies that caused me to finally click “sign up”. I’ve been going to that same class every week for the past year and a half.

The irony is that I think I dance better now than I ever did when I was trying to cut it as a ballerina. Sure, I’m not as strong technically. I can’t whip out triple pirouettes and I don’t plan on wearing pointe shoes for longer than 30 minutes ever again, but I’m different. My dancing is different. My movement feels different. I don’t know if it’s the life experience I’ve gained since the ballet years, if it’s just being older, if it’s looking at dancing in a light that is less blinding…it’s probably all of the above. But now when I dance, I actually want to take up space again. I want to take up space with my body. I want to take up space with my emotions. I want to take up space with the energy of my entire being. And not only do I want to take up space, but I know I deserve to take up space. I know that space is something I owe myself.

Whether we use our movement or our minds, our verbs or our voices, we are worthy of space. In our jobs, in our relationships, in our accomplishments, and in our weaknesses, we are worthy of space. In our hopes, in our goals, in our actions, and in our reactions, we are worthy of space.

So whatever we do, be it big or small, intentional or spontaneous, triumphant or failing, we deserve to do it out loud. We deserve to do it with commitment. We deserve to do it unapologetically. We deserve to take up our own space. Because if we leave our space available, something else is sure to take it from us.